Sunday, 12 October 2008

October 1996 was a superb month for me, including a great Scillies trip. We'd booked our flights for Saturday 12th, but with exciting news hitting us leading up to the day, we set off early and arrived on St Mary's on Friday 11th. Immediately on arriving we hurried over to Sallyport to obtain stunning views of one of the best birds I've seen in Britain - an absolutely stonking Black-and-White Warbler. This turned out to be the first of five neartic passerine ticks over the next six days, and the first of 16 ticks for me in October 96!! As soon as we'd seen the warbler well, we rushed to the quay for a boat to Tresco. On landing, we legged it to the Borough Farm area and were soon watching a Buff-bellied Pipit. Oh man - what a day. And what a trip, with the other main highlights being Red-eyed Vireo (my 300th tick) at Longstone, St Mary's 13th and Bobolink on Bryher on 14th.

I had to leave the islands on 17th in order to get home for Isabelle's first birthday on 18th. This was in itself a good move as I took a detour through Portland to see the fantastic Northern Waterthrush.

Back in the (pre-digital) day, I used to buy the odd photo from the rarity photographers that were part of the scene. Most though have no details on them so I can't remember who took the photos. Either way, I'm sure they wouldn't mind me posting them here so you can see what I enjoyed on 11th October 1996!

Sunday, 5 October 2008

Time for another electronic blast from the vaults of iNDUSTRiE. However - I must warn all that right from the off, this track contains a constant barrage of expletive venom courtesy of Dennis Hopper as sampled from the superb David Lynch film Blue Velvet.
In order to save webspace etc, I've uploaded to YouTube having made use of Windows MovieMaker. Don't expect an interesting or dynamic video! It's just a static backdrop for the music.
This track developed over a couple of years, and was a regular live track at our gigs. This version was recorded in 1993 directly sequenced from a multi-out sampler (Akai s2800), albeit onto analogue tape. I've recorded into the Clean software, de-noised it a bit and that's all - so not the most balanced mix but you get the idea.
Warning - expletive ridden from the first syllable.

Played in bands, drank some beer, went birding, started twitching, played poker, drank some beer, photographed moths, stopped twitching, watched some football, stopped birding, drank some beer, started birding, and somewhere along the way got married and created three great children. Not necessarily in that order. Please have a look at the first posting to this BLOG for a slightly more detailed introduction to my background.